Category Archives: Biblical Interpretation

Why Matthew Vines’ Video on “God and the Gay Christian” is Applaudable but ultimately Unconvincing

27 Monday Oct 2014

Posted by in Biblical Interpretation, Christ and Culture, Christian Ministry, Difficult Questions, Gay marriage, Homosexuality, Homosexuals

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Matthew Vines’ video aims to persuade a revisitation to the biblical texts that deal with homosexuality. This, to my mind, is laudable precisely because it points us back to the biblical text itself. There are other ways Vines could argue to make his point; indeed, many postmodern theologians and interpreters of the Bible are content to make the community they represent the authoritative touchstone for judging the biblical text itself. They ask what ways the current situation today acts as a check on the Bible to bring its undesirable aspects into view and, then, to extract them so that what is left is God’s unpolluted message. Probably the best known example of this comes from the feminist theologians, who claim that the Bible upholds patriarchalism, and, by extension, male hegemony. These feminist theologians have offered a helpful renewal of interest on how the Bible presents women. I am persuaded by a number of their points, particularly on the interpretation of the woman at the well (John 4), who is often treated as little more than a immoral confuse woman, who Jesus enlightens and fixes. A close look at this text shows that such an interpretation likely owes more to male bias than to the logic of the text: Jn. 4:12 shows the woman is following Jesus’ discussion, discerning how powerful Jesus’ claim is about living water by comparing Him with Jacob, the namesake of Israel. Verse 15 shows the woman’s acceptance of Jesus’ claim and her openness to receiving it after only a few difficult to understand statements by Jesus. Then, she goes on to tell Jesus that He is a Prophet (v. 19), and a number of sophisticated religious issues in her culture (v. 20). After Jesus unpacks what she has stated, she gives a basic but correct statement about theology, that is, that the Messiah is coming to reveal all things (v. 25). All this to say that the woman at the well is a far more complex character than simply a immoral confused woman. Certainly, she was living immorally, but she is religiously and culturally astute, as seen from her comments. Now, why do I spend time on this point. I do so because some of these “alternative interpretative communities” offer valuable insight, so we ought to carefully consider their points before we “throw the baby out with the bathwater.” Vines’ work with the biblical text in an attempt to reconcile the homosexual lifestyle with God’s word shows genuine humility. It would be much easier for him to just dismiss those parts of the Bible as outright wrong, judged so by the contemporary situation. Ultimately, though, his discussion is unconvincing. There are a number of ways to show how it is unpersuasive, but I want to offer a novel way of putting an old point, indeed it is the point Jesus Himself makes when dealing with a question about male-female relationship and what the husbands were doing to their wives (Matt. 19:1 – 9). Vines’ presentation — and let me offer the segment from 2:55 – 3:05 as an example — shifts the focus from the “what of love” to the “manner of love.” The three words he uses, “faithfulness, commitment, love,” from what I can tell, all focus on the manner in which we are to related.  Few, I suppose, would object to this definition of a “good manner of relating.” This, however, is only part of the issue because it has long been known, especially since St. Augustine’s point in Enchiridion, that goodness and love have both ontological aspects and modal aspects (Augustine comments on Gen. 1:31). Ontological refers to the “nature of things” and modal refers to the “manner of things.” Vines’ focus on the “manner of good relating” is praiseworthy, but goodness and love cannot be reduced to just the manner, dismissing the “nature of things.” The Genesis text Jesus cites, Gen. 2:24, is richly focused on the “nature of things” as is Genesis 1:31: Jesus states, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’?” Love, as I’ve pinned to my twitter account, is always as much about form (manner) as about content (what). What God made was male and female; what man and woman became was one flesh. God’s declaration that all was “very good” in Gen. 1:31, including what God has fashioned in Adam and Eve, is an overarching statement that is as much ontological (nature of things) as modal (manner of things). Arguing that homosexual relations are good based on the manner of relating misses the issue of what. Vines’ idea of a good or loving relationship is on the mark, but the manner of relating argument cannot answer the what of relation issue. Both what a relationship is and how it is to transpire cannot be reduced into one or the other without a severe diminution of what it means to be human in relationships. It is, to my mind, somewhat shocking that Vines doesn’t consider the creation account as relevant to the question he was seeking to answer. For a good debate on the matter, see 

Dr. Scalise

Why do biblical Persons contradict biblical Qualifications: Deborah in Judges 4 in Light of 1 Tim. 3 & Titus 1

24 Friday Oct 2014

Posted by in Apologetics, Biblical Interpretation, Christ and Culture, Church Leadership, Difficult Questions, Difficult Texts

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Introduction

Why are there specific qualifications for Elders and Deacons (1 Tim. 3, Titus 1) yet most of the men and women God used to lead His People OT and in the early church didn’t meet many of these standards? My first mentor asked the question above, and I confess, it is a doozy. I think that the contradiction may be nigh near impossible to deal with if we approach it through an inductive approach. We cannot simply find all the verses in the Bible that speak to the matter, and then tally up what the result is. If we did this, we would see that the “man after God’s own heart,” King David, had multiple wives and even concubines, but the qualifications listed in 1 Tim. and Titus clearly state that leaders of the people of God should have only one wife. I want to eliminate a few options right at the front for dealing with the text. I do not want to revise the biblical text by picking and chooses some verses while eliminating others or debate the dating of books: we can call this the revisionist option. Like Kevin Vanhoozer and Bernard Childs, I think we ought to work with a full canon of Scripture rather than thinking our methods can lead us to the “truth behind the text,” as though the truth isn’t in the text of the Bible. I think that the old dispensational explanation that God works differently during different ages hits on an important truth, but I do not want to package it the way a dispensationalist would. It is too simple to considerably explain the complexity of the biblical text. Let’s look at what 1 Tim 3:2–4 states: “Therefore an overseer must be above reproach, the husband of one wife, sober-minded, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, not a drunkard, not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome, not a lover of money. He must manage his own household well, with all dignity keeping his children submissive . . . .” I don’t think we can just say, “Well, the church is a different organization at a different time than the theocracy of Israel and so they have different rules for different communities and times.” In what follows, I want to use Judges 4 (Deborah:female leadership) as a test case that contradicts 1 Tim. 3 and Titus 1 (male leadership) so as to illustrate one way to handle this. I am going to avoid what I call the “dominating other biblical texts into silence approach” often used that is undergirded with the logic that the last word on the matter is what stands for us today (1 Tim. and Titus are both near the end of the Bible). After this — and this is the main body of the discussion — I offer some philosophical answers to the problem along with observations about the entirety of the Bible. I believe I could answer the question with only this last section, but I want to give lots to think about in order to push both our understanding of the Bible and how to apply it today.

Vanhoozer’s Linguistic-Canonical Approach to the Bible

Kevin Vanhoozer’s development in Evangelical Futures, which is his own summarization of The Drama of Doctrine, offers what he terms the “canonical-linguistic approach.” I want to explain it before I use it for this issue because it is a thematic approach to the Bible, tracing certain ideas across its pages to observe where the text “points” or “directs.” The Bible acts as a kind of mentor, and we are its apprentices. It is not enough to just know what the Bible says; we need to observe the method by which the Bible addresses an issue in its various contexts. As we bring all of these observations together, we have a collection of both what the Bible says and how the Bible handles certain issues in specific contexts. The crux of Vanhoozer’s approach is that the whole canon, that is, the whole Bible, must be consulted so that we can become an “apprentice” to its wisdom, not merely parrots of verses (Evangelical Futures, 80 – 82). While it remains that using the canonical-linguistic approach requires knowing all or many of the verses dealing with a difficult biblical question about living the Christian life, about theology, or other practical day-to-day issues, it seeks to form a summarization of this content for the purpose of living rightly. We need to know what the Bible says, how it goes about saying it, and how to bring not just the “what” to bear, but the “how” as well, in our situations. In short, the Bible’s wisdom on a matter must be performed by us. Some may assume this suspect, but it is only following what we think the Apostle Matthew did in his Gospel when he said that Jesus will “be called a Nazarene.” St. Matthew introduces this as spoken by the Prophets, as though it is coming from the OT, but no text like this exists in the OT. Many scholars think that St. Matthew is summarizing the OT teaching, so that what St. Matthews says is the collective wisdom and teaching on this coming Messiah although no Prophet specifically states what Matthew says.

Judges 4 in the Light of 1 Tim. 3 & Titus 1

We all know the story of Deborah, the woman Judge and Prophetess who led Israel to victory over Sisera and Jabin (Judges 4). Barak, in my opinion, is not to be credited with the victory because he risked being disobedient to God by refusing to obey Him by going to battle unless Deborah would go with Him (4:6, 8). A Judge, it is to be remembered, was a civil and legal leader of the nation of Israel, so Deborah acts as a kind of “governor” over the diverse tribes of Israel. Further, as a Prophetess in the role of Judge, she no doubt had powerful influence over the spiritual climate of Israel, greater than many of the mega church pastors’ influence combined today. It is not a misnomer, then, to call her both a spiritual and civl leader. I’ve heard a number of persons claim that the narrative about Deborah teaches the principle that God will use a woman rather than a man when strong men cannot be found to lead. I am not sure how such an understanding is possible because the text makes no bones about Deborah’s status as a Prophetess and Judge: “Then the people of Israel cried out to the Lord for help, for he had 900 chariots of iron and he oppressed the people of Israel cruelly for twenty years.  Now Deborah, a prophetess, the wife of Lappidoth, was judging Israel at that time. She used to sit under the palm of Deborah between Ramah and Bethel in the hill country of Ephraim, and the people of Israel came up to her for judgment. She sent and summoned Barak the son of Abinoam . . . .” (Esv). The text is not about God “raising a woman up” because Barak wouldn’t rise to the occasion or any other “strong men” for that matter. Rather, the text, in typical Hebrew narrative just presents Deborah as the Judge and Prophetess — the “Now Deborah . . .” is introduced with the Hebrew term for continuing a narrative, waw ו. There is no indication either from the Hebrew text or the English that Deborah’s role is unusual or that she is appointed because of some dire situation. Instead, what we find is a woman in power who deals decisively with the problem: “She sent and summoned Barak . . . .” Barak is not cast as the leader in this text. Deborah is clearly the one with the authority to summon him and, with her spiritual authority, she delivers the word of the Lord to Barak for how to handle this oppressive situation: “Has not the Lord, the God of Israel, commanded you, ‘Go, gather your men at Mount Tabor, taking 10,000 from the people of Naphtali and the people of Zebulun. 7 And I will draw out Sisera, the general of Jabin’s army, to meet you by the river Kishon with his chariots and his troops, and I will give him into your hand’?”” Deborah orchestrates both Barak’s involvement and how to go about the battle. Barak promptly refuses to listen unless Deborah comes along: “Barak said to her, “If you will go with me, I will go, but if you will not go with me, I will not go.”” There is no indication from this text that Deborah is at odds with God; indeed, Deborah was so intimate with God that she knew what God had told Barak. Now, what are we to do with this glaring contradiction to 1 Tim. and Titus. At this point, I could launch into a long, although no doubt profitable, discussion of cultural norms and cultural change. I will say a bit on this shortly in the final section, but let’s apply Vanhoozer’s linguistic-canonical approach to the present tension between Judges 4 and 1 Tim. 3/Titus 1. If we inductively tallied up the texts, we would be left with a major contradiction: God says only men are to lead in 1 Tim. 3 and Titus 1, but God shows that a woman can lead both as a spiritual and civic leader in Judges 4. If we looked at the rest of Judges, we would observe that the rest of the leaders/Judges were men. From this we would conclude that woman leadership is not contrary to God either in principle or in fact. Woman leadership, however, looking at the “method” or “models of leadership” offered in Judges, suggests that it is irregular. Judges 4 does not teach that woman can only lead when strong men are lacking; this is not what the text conveys. From this point, we need to look all across the Bible, at all models of leadership, to see what else we can conclude about leadership: I don’t have space to do this: it would be a book. We would surely find many “men only” models: kings of Israel, Priests of Israel, Jesus’ inner 12 disciples, some church leaders. Although I’ve listed Jesus’ inner 12, it is not to be missed that women were also part of Jesus’ discipleship group that traveled around with him (Mt. 27:55, Mk 15:41, Lk. 23:49, esp. Lk. 24:22, Acts 1:14). Also, in Romans, St. Paul mentions two women in his farewell remarks in chapter 16: Phoebe (v. 1) the deaconess and Junias the apostle (v. 7). There are other women we could mention as well. This suffices to “point-out” in a linguistic canonical approach that the canon of Scripture, in its fulness, is not opposed to woman leadership in principle or in fact. What I want to avoid at this point is opting for a universalizing or totalitarian use of one Scripture or set of Scriptures to silence the others. Cast in the light of the linguistic-canonical approach, 1 Tim. 3 and Titus 1 are eminently consistent with the majority of male-model-leadership found across the pages of Scripture. If I had more time, I would want to look at the cultural situations of the locations where Timothy and Titus were Pastors. The linguistic-canonical approach will not allow us to leave it at that because we are interested in the entirety of the biblical witness and how that “directs” us to live-out that wisdom, not in silencing the rest of the biblical witness or reinterpreting it in the image or model of 1 Tim. and Titus. Some will find this “iffy.” I would point out that there are many texts with women in prominent roles just above, and more could be added to that. I find silencing many texts in Scripture’s teaching on a matter more “iffy” than finding a way to let it all stand. Male-leadership, therefore, is the general guideline for church leadership, but woman leadership is not excluded in principle (de jure) or in fact (de facto). In 1 Tim and Titus there may have been cultural issues that had created women in that town who were domineering — more than one commentator has claimed this in Timothy’s situation. I hope all of this has gone to show that looking across the whole canon of the Bible leads to the conclusion that certain imperatives in a text or two cannot dominant the rest of the biblical witness into silence in cases where they disagree, even if it is the “last word” God spoke on a matter. The entire biblical text must direct our thinking and consequent living on a matter. Thus, 1 Tim. and Titus no doubt apply directly to those churches, but St. Paul, the same author of 1 Tim. and Titus, can also call Phoebe a deaconess of the Church of Cenchreae, and Romans is dated not long before 1 Tim. and Titus.

Philosophical Answers and Observations on the Whole Bible

Why does God deal with specific situations sometimes differently? It seems because situations always differ, and sometimes call for more specific direction than in other places. For instance, why was it enough that Abraham just “trust” God and keep the few commands God gave to him whereas the Israelites at Sinai were delivered 613 commands? Was did Noah only get a few commands? God’s commands can also be inconsistent across the whole of Scripture because God sometimes condescends to meet humanity where they are (as Jesus taught, Mt. 19:8), while other times His commands are utterly high (Deut. 6:1 – 10) and consistent with His nature. Moreover, after the fall, God is interested in refashioning man into useful vessels for God’s purposes (Jer. 18:5 – 11) according to man’s cooperation with God; echoing John Hick, God is interested in “soul-making.” Thus, some commands come sooner or later in God’s economy of guiding man back towards Christ and, through Him and in the Spirit, to heaven. This thought follows the narrative flow of Genesis 6 – 12:1 – 3 because man falls (Gen. 3), and they are heavily influenced into evil so much so that God kills all but Noah and his family. From this point, God’s task of reclaiming humanity from the Devil is ongoing, particularly and powerfully advanced in Gen. 12:1 – 3 with the call and promise to Abraham (see NT Wright’s Climax of the Covenant). God’s role in developing both the biblical narrative and Israel as a people is transformative across the pages of history. God doesn’t only deliver a rote set of laws to be woodenly followed but never advanced as Deuteronomy makes clear: Deut. 17:8 – 11. This text already assumes the the Laws God gave would not be enough to handle every situation, but gives the leaders power to direct them. Moreover, Deut. 29:1 already makes mention of the coming new “covenant,” the one “besides the covenant God man with them at Horeb.” This leads into my final point, that God’s revelation across time is a “spiral” leading to a telos, or certain end and goal. It is not a cycle. God’s directives can show greater or lesser consistency with earlier or later commands because Scripture is ever unpacking and elaborating, not just restating what has already been said. As a spiral, we expect God to set up certain administrative policies for how He governs His people that we will see again and again, but that also advance (this is actually what typology, what the Catholics call allegory, is all about). In 1 Tim. 3 and Titus 1, we are on part of the spiral that coincides with God’s former preference for male leadership, but this does not demand that we universalize it so that just that part of the spiral becomes the whole spiral. In fact, Scripture would caution us against such a “silencing” of other parts of the biblical text. Dr. Scalise

Appearances of Evil: Ephesians 5:3 & 1 Thessalonians 5:22

19 Sunday Oct 2014

Posted by in Biblical Interpretation, Christian Ministry, Exegesis and Interpretation, Human Experience and Theology

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Appearances of Evil

Ephesians 5:3 &1 Thessalonians 5:22

I think Eph. 5:3, “But immorality or any impurity or greed must not even be named among you, as is proper among saints” (all Translations are mine unless otherwise indicated), could be one of the texts for the cliché about Christians not have an “appearance of evil.” The phrases, “or any” is literally from the Greek, “and all impurity.” I suppose, then, the question becomes named by whom? Of course, “immorality” and “greed” are quite narrow in their meaning but “all impurity” does look to be a catch all “heart” category in terms of the corruption found therein. The term, “impurity” is akatharsia (ακαθαρσια) meaning “uncleanliness” but can be translated as “immorality” but here, since a more specific term for immorality is on the list, it is more likely, especially with “all” attached to the front (all impurity), emphasizing the preconditions for an actual action of immorality. It is the filth, “uncleanliness,” in a man that is the problem. This term is used by Jesus in the Gospels in an interesting comparative text, “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs which on the outside appear beautiful, but inside they are full of dead men’s bones and all uncleanness” (Mt. 23:27: Italics and Bold mine). Now that I see this comparison and notice that the Eph. 5:3 list does include a non-sexual sin, namely, “greed,” I doubt if the emphasis is on “uncleanliness” as sexual immorality and, instead, emphasizing more broadly, like Jesus, the state of corruption in a man, likely pointing to what both greed and sexual sin have in common, namely, covetousness. In both Matt. 23:27 and Eph 5:3 the phrases are the same in the connection between “all” (Gr.: pas) plus “uncleanliness”. Therefore, greed and sexual immorality are concrete “fruit” of the inner corruption of “all uncleanliness.” This text is not so much concerned with the worry of looking like we are doing evil so much as it is concerned with the heart-mind condition leading to actual acts of evil. This teaching has as a long and abiding foundation in the 10th commandment: “You will not covet . . .” which centers on the the inner attitude of coveting rather than “just anything evil.”

The other text that could be translated as the “appearance of evil” is 1 Thess. 5:22: “Abstain from every appearance/form of evil.” Most modern translations opt for “form” because the word itself has as its central meaning, “that which is seen,” i.e., “from every seen form of evil.” In other words, we have here a confusion of different English meanings for the word “appear,” that is, there is more than one way to understand it: the word is equivocal, having more than one meaning. What the Greek text has clearly in mind is not “what might appear evil” in the sense of “appear” meaning “what might suggest evil” or “what might be confused with evil” or “what might look like evil.” The Greek word, eidos, means what is concretely seen: a clear form, and in this case, a notable form or concrete practice of evil. This is especially clear when compared to some other places in the NT this term appear. Luke 9:29 is the narrative about Jesus’ transfiguration, “As he was praying, the appearance of his face was transformed, and his clothes became very bright, a brilliant white” (Bold and italics mine). This text is not using the term eidos (appearance) to say that Jesus’ face “might suggest transformation” or “might be confused with transforming” or “might look like it transformed.” Indeed, for something “to transfigure” is precisely for it (Him, in Jesus’ case) to change. Literally from the Greek, its says, ” . . . the form of his face became different (or “another”).” In another text after

Jesus is resurrected, it states, “And his appearance was like lightning . . .” (Bold and italics mine). I think this text is noteworthy because Matthew felt the need to add that little word “like.” If “appearance” were to mean “what might look like evil,” in the sense of “what might be confused with evil” or “what might suggest evil,” as noted formerly, then why would Matthew feel the need to add that little word “like” to clarify that Jesus was not made (in the form of) of lightning? The addition of “like” moves “appearance” away from its typical meaning of “what is concretely seen” towards a metaphorical meaning: “what is seen looks like lightning.” In the same way, then, in 1 Thess. 5:22, if the meaning was abstaining “from everything that looks like evil” would we not expect, then, the addition of the word “like” (Greek: hōs)? For further verification of this usage of the word, that is, having the meaning of “what is concretely and clearly seen,” also confer John 5:37, Luke 3:22 (another example of “like” added), & 2 Cor. 5:7. This is every example of the word in the NT, all meaning, “what is concretely seen” with two examples of “like” having to be added to move its meaning towards “looks like” and away from “what is concretely and clearly seen.” Finally for a comparison and to answer a discernible objection, 2 Tim. 3:5 says, “having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power” (Bold and italics mine). “Appearance” here is morfōsis, not eidos.

B. T. Scalise
Copyright, Wild-Theology, © Brian Scalise 2014

Typology of the typological-historic type

17 Friday Oct 2014

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The second type of typology is historic in nature. There are certain patterns of activity that God likes to work in the through. These patterns occur and reoccur again and again across the pages of Scripture — and perhaps in other events. In Scripture, we can trace these patterns back to God clearly and with little doubt because He chose to reveal Himself through His activity in and through the events recorded and interpreted in and by Scripture. God is the redeemer who oversees the first Exodus in the Book of Exodus. This “exodus type” is not prophetic in its own right. There are not indications that the Exodus narrative is predicting something about the future. As God reveals more of Himself and His activity in history, it becomes clearer that the “exodus type” is something God likes to use. We find, then, Israel’s later return from captivity in Babylon being interpreted by the Prophets as another Exodus albeit far less spectacular than the first. Luke records in Lk. 9:31 that Jesus was leading a new exodus as well. The first Exodus in the Book of Exodus is just an event, but later revelation by God shows that this historic event was setting a fountain of God’s preferential activity in history. Thus, the NT author Luke can use the Exodus, not as a prophecy in its own right, but as an indication of the same God who led Israel for 40 years in the wilderness who was now leading humanity in the Son of God Jesus.

B. T. Scalise

Biblical Interpretation: the Difference between Allegory and Typology

08 Wednesday Oct 2014

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Allegory and typology differ because allegory wholly removes the meaning of one thing and replaces it with another but typology builds and uses parts of that meaning. For instance, Hagar in Gal. 4 represents Mt. Sinai; the meaning, “a woman named Hagar” is removed and replaced with “a mountain where the law was given.” But typology would use parts of the meaning of the type while “unpacking” or “increasing” or “adding to” that earlier type. Jesus and Adam are a good example; both men are founders of a humanity (same meaning) but Jesus is God (additional meaning added) and not the founder of sinful humanity (like Adam) but of righteous humanity. Allegory need not be historical, but typology must. Take Hebrews 11:16’s report that persons of faith seek a better country, a heavenly one and the heavenly Jerusalem. The earthly land and city of Jerusalem are historical places, and they act as types for their heavenly correlates. Moses was told this long along in the Book of Exodus: 25:40:

“And see that you make them after the pattern for them, which is being shown you on the mountain.”

The author of Hebrew expands,

“They serve as a copy and shadow of the heavenly things” (Heb. 8:5; 9:23)

Moses saw heavenly realities on the Mountain of God, Sinai, and God commands Him to create the Tabernacle and all that was in it “after” these heavenly patterns He saw. Similarly, God crafted the history around Jerusalem so that it stood for God and as the City of God. This historical reality then acts to help us think about the heavenly reality waiting to be revealed during the eschaton, when heaven meets earth (Revelation 21).

Dr. Scalise

Typology: then and now

07 Tuesday Oct 2014

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The Catholic Church has long recognized the use of typology in the Old Testament as foreshadowing the New; in the Catholic Catechism, typology is called allegorical interpretation. This is a bit misleading because allegory is more different than the same to typology. I want to just comment a bit on how we can practically use typology today and why it is important to understand it for this very reason. An example of typology is the serpent (snake) plague that descended on the Israelites during the Exodus because of their evil. God instructs Moses to hold a representation of a serpent up on a pole and any who look to it would live even though they had been bitten. Jesus later refers Nicodemus to this event, noting that the Son of man must be hung similarly (John 3). Jesus is using typology; Jesus represents humanity and then crucified for humanity’s rightful death. Any who look to this symbol of death — Jesus in the Gospels and the serpent in Exodus — will live. The imagery from the OT is of death hung on a pole meaning life for those who looked to it; so it is with Jesus in the NT. How can we use this today? There seems to be two major issues in the way. First, we need to know what the typologies in the Bible are designed to present. In the example above, Jesus is showing us not only that God will later use Jesus’ death to mean life for others but also that God favors this type of typology, as illustrated earlier in the Exodus. Second, once we have a handle on how a typology represents God, we need to know when and how to apply it. We can become this “symbol of death leading to others’ life” that Jesus so richly exemplified. We can become typologies of both the Exodus account and of Jesus’ crucifixion. It is not easy, but we may become the embodiment of death leading to life in the way Mother Teresa did. She put herself in a context of death, endangering her own, so as to pass life-giving care to others. We could be utterly harmed for the sake of others good, with perhaps unbelieving friends or family watching. If we do, we have become a typology of what Jesus represented: namely, being victimized, harmed, taken advantage of for others’ good. We cannot guarantee how others will view our “dramatization,” but we can lift a prayer to God to make it typological of Him, His Son, and His life-giving characters, even when it costs Him (Romans 8:32). God is the God of over pouring love who did spare even His own Son, but gave Him up for us. This is radically shocking. Can I, can we, be the sacrifice (death) for enriching others (bringing life). A stout person this takes, as the Lord prepares every person for such courageous service.

Dr. Scalise